#2016

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has recently published a fact sheet titled “The SIPRI Top 100 Arms‑Producing and Military Services Companies, 2016”. It is an analysis of the 2016 year showing the top 100 arms trading companies as well as the tendencies and structure of the global arms market. We’ll take a look at the key points of this study in our article. If you want to read the original document, click here.

It’s not news to gun owners that firearms sales in the United States have skyrocketed upwards since the expiration of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban in 2004, a trend which picked up steam with the 2008 election. What is surprising even to a seasoned gun nerd like myself is just  how much gun sales in the US have grown, and how relentless the growth has been. As evidence of this, 2016 has already become the all-time record year for gun sales in the USA, even without counting the month of December (the highest-sales month of the the year for guns). The first eleven months of 2016 have seen 24,767,514 NICS checks, well over two and a half million checks more than 2015’s record of 23,141,970.

The AK-12 is dead. Long live the AK-12! That’s the song Kalashnikov Concern is singing this week at the recent ARMY 2016 expo in Moscow, Russia. The radical AK-12 prototypes that have dominated Kalashnikov’s press over the past two years are gone, replaced by a more conservative rifle – also called “AK-12” – based on the Concern’s previous AK-400 prototypes. The new rifle addresses the Russian Army’s concerns regarding the AK-12’s cost and issues in fully automatic fire, an anonymous source told TFB, and is expected to be much cheaper to build than the previous model. It incorporates many of the same improvements developed for the previous AK-12 model, but improves the strength and resilience of some of the components.

On Day 3 of the 2016 National Rifle Association Annual Meeting, we got to see new products from Magpul, old friends from Mauser, and relics from the National Firearms Museum.

Day two of the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting was on Saturday, and accordingly the exhibition hall was packed with people enjoying the weekend browsing booths, taking photos with celebrities, and interacting with manufacturers. For me, the second day was time to catch up on the news and exhibits that I had missed the first day. Daniel Defense, for example, released a 32 round AR-15 magazine the first day of the show. In fact, the magazines were advertised over about a quarter of the urinals at the show, although I didn’t have the presence of mind to photograph any of the posters.

At the 2016 National Rifle Association Annual Meeting, gunmaker Smith & Wesson announced a new single stack carry handgun for the civilian market: A .45 ACP variant of their popular Military & Police Shield, previously available in .40 S&W and 9mm only.

At the 2016 NRA Annual Meeting, Tikka and parent company Beretta were showing off the new T3x rifle, an improved version of their T3 hunting and sporting bolt action rifles. The T3x is a system developed as a direct result of feedback from Tikka’s customers, and the representatives from the company present at the show were very proud of that fact.

Expos like the 2016 NRA Annual Meeting or the SHOT Show are usually places to find the latest and greatest in the firearms world. Sometimes, however, exhibitors bring along relics of the past, forgotten firearms that haven’t seen the public spotlight in decades or even centuries. For Rock Island Auction, these kinds of items are their business, and in reflection of that, the auction company brought some extremely rare and unusual rifles to the NRA 2016 showroom floor.

The Firearm Blog is walking the halls of the showroom floor here at the National Rifle Association’s 2016 Annual Meeting. In addition to spotlights on exhibitors, we will also be publishing collection posts covering the show more broadly to give folks a sense of what there is to see, and where.